


Imperfections: Chicago

by Dasha (Dasha_mte)



Series: Imperfections [14]
Category: The Sentinel (TV), due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-01
Updated: 2006-05-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:20:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22494625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dasha_mte/pseuds/Dasha
Summary: Who tracks a wolf 30 blocks through downtown Chicago? That's just not normal...
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Series: Imperfections [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/6682
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	Imperfections: Chicago

**Author's Note:**

> I really thought this was posted here, but I can't find it. And I'm really trying to tidy things up as I contemplate finishing xenoethnography.

_So, you were sitting up there when this supposed crime took place....where?_

_Approximately thirty-five meters south-south west._

_And you saw this from across the room, through the pagoda and around the corner, right?_

_No, I heard it._

_You heard it?_

_Hey, Lewis. He **heard** it._

_Tell, me Fraser, what exactly does a kidnapping sound like?_

_Well, in this case, there was the sound of a foot breaking glass. This was followed by the scream of a female bystander and the squeal of tires as the vehicle pulled away from the curb._

_And did you happen to hear a license plate number, too?_

_No, the license plate was concealed by mud._

_You know what we have here, Jack? Another case of... speeding with a dirty license plate._

Fraser was being weird. He'd pulled out all the stops on this one, was way over the top, and Ray really wished he had something better to go on, some kind of circumstantial evidence Forensics would believe or maybe a nice witness, but no, all they had was Fraser being weird, and Ray had to go with it. He had to, because the FBI was fucking up the case and Ray and Fraser had helped them do it. That kid was going to get killed, and as pissed as Ray would be about that, Fraser would be devastated, and, no, Ray could live with failure, but he couldn't live with Benny blaming himself over this. No, just no. So Ray griped and whined but let Fraser play around on the floor with fingernail clippings--fingernail clippings, for God's sake--and hoped for a miracle. Benny was good with miracles.

"It's not the nails we're interested in, Ray, it's what's underneath them." He'd pulled a pair of tweezers from somewhere and was picking through the little pile of nail parings like they had all the time in the world.

"Fraser, this guy wears two thousand dollar suits. He's not going to walk around with dirt under his nails."

"Well, exactly, which means that anything we find had to have been collected since he showered this morning." He lifted one of the parings in the tweezers and touched it to his tongue. It was too disgusting to watch, and Ray threw up his hands, yelling for Fraser to quit it. "Just close your eyes, it won't bother you," Fraser said calmly.

Ray's eyes were already closed, but he was ready to gag anyway. It was like Fraser had no understanding of filth. Jesus. "Just hurry up, will you?" Ray waited through the long seconds of silence until he couldn't stand it any more. "Well?" he asked, peeking.

"Potassium nitrate," he frowned, lightly tasting the disgusting thing again, "and a touch of sulfur."

"That's gun powder," Ray said, forgetting the nasty method of data collection.

Even as he nodded at Ray, all of Fraser's attention was on the sliver gripped by the tweezers. "Not ordinary gun powder," he said. "It's very low grade. It's not like anything I've ever tasted."

Right. Because somehow Fraser was an expert in the taste of gun powder. "Do you do this a lot?" he asked. "Try to solve cases by gnawing on ammunition?" Did they just not have forensic laboratories in Canada? Surely, everybody up there didn't work like this. He'd seen Canada, of course. Once, but that was enough. Ray knew that sometimes you really were on a case hundreds of miles from the nearest town, and yes, okay, then you had to use the assets you had with you, but still.... He had that feeling again. Something just wasn't right.

"Well, I admit, it is a calculated risk, Ray." His eyes lit briefly with something like amusement as he put away his tweezers. "But I am a professional. This is not for amateurs." He rose briskly, retrieved his hat, and headed for the door, leaving Ray staring at the disgusting little pile of nail clippings. Ray would risk his life for a case, sure, but he drew the line at tasting stuff. Even whatshisname, Edwards, up in forensics, he didn't taste stuff, and he was a sentinel....

The case swept them along as fast as Ray could keep up. There really wasn't time to sit down for a few minutes and tally up Fraser's enhanced senses. In a way, he didn't need to. Now that he'd seen it, so much of the last half-year made a lot more sense. And also a lot less sense, but he didn't have time sort it out because Wong was going to kill the kid in an hour and Fraser was sure that the low-grade gunpowder meant fireworks, not munitions.

"In case you didn't realize, Mister Mountie, that you cannot buy, sell, or manufacture fireworks anywhere in the city of Chicago," Ray said.

"That is unless you have a license to exhibit."

Right. That made sense. Ray looked up, wondering if Fraser was just guessing.

Fraser nodded. "City Ordinance, section fifteen dash twenty."

"You read that?"

"There's a world of information at your local library, Ray," and yeah, he was just being Fraser, both funny and serious at the same time, but that didn't change the fact that he'd nearly memorized the city ordinances. Ray couldn't help wondering if the memory thing was a sentinel thing, too.

After the shoot-out in the firework warehouse (and the near-death experience that usually accompanied working a case with Fraser) and the fighting and yelling and running and last-second rescue and arrest, Ray stood on the sidewalk with Fraser, watching the fireworks the FBI had accidentally set off paint the sky in glittering colors. He smiled. They wouldn't get the credit on this one, but since it all worked out, they wouldn't get fired either. The kid was alive and being hugged to pieces by his parents. The FBI had Wong in custody. Life was good.

The crowd was huge, though, and the fireworks were close and loud. Benny wasn't fond of either crowds or loud noises, and now that Ray knew why, he thought it would be a good idea to get him away. He started up the street, knowing that Benny would follow.

"Shouldn't we stay and...fill out some reports?" Fraser asked, his long strides quickly catching up.

Ray smiled, felt the smile dissolve into a smirk. "Well, no, we have to leave them something to do."

Ray spotted a diner a couple of blocks down and ducked in as a refuge. The young waitress spotted Dief and hesitantly stepped toward them. Ray flashed his badge and growled, "The dog's a material witness," which made the girl back down and Fraser frown uncertainly.

"It wasn't a lie," Ray muttered as they sat down at a back booth. "He's witnessed three felonies this week alone, including the kidnapping we just closed." Briefly, just briefly, Fraser met Ray's eyes. He was curious; usually Ray was just as happy to leave Diefenbaker in the street while they ate. He didn't understand the sudden change of heart. Come to think of it, neither did Ray, but he didn't want to let either of them out of his sight.

The girl came back with the menus. Ray set the menu aside and ordered coffee. Fraser had tea and ordered a scrambled egg for the wolf. As the waitress walked away, Ray found himself asking, "So, the tea. Is that a Canadian thing or a sentinel thing?"

He actually surprised Fraser with that. It hardly ever happened, but Ray saw the flash of astonishment and the wariness that followed before the polite Mountie mask slid into place. "Personal preference," he said blandly.

Ray nodded. "So, they do have Sentinels in Canada?"

"Oh. Yes, of course. Although, interestingly, not as many as in the States. Well, proportionally speaking. I've heard several theories--"

"Are you official? I mean, do you have a diagnosis and paperwork and everything?"

"It's not an illness, Ray. You don't get a 'diagnosis.'" He paused, caught under Ray's careful scrutiny. "Yes, it's official. I've been tested. My scores aren't particularly high, but they're well over the threshold--" He trailed off and glanced away. He looked more uncertain than Ray had ever seen.

Ray found himself nodding slowly. All the licking and the sniffing and going into closets to remember sounds...Oh, yeah, everything made more sense now. Except the things that made less sense.

"Aren't you supposed to have a guide?" That was one of the things that didn't make sense. Ray would have twigged right away if there had been a guide around, but no, and there had to be one, didn't there? Edwards wasn't allowed to fill out paperwork without a guide on duty. "I mean, isn't it illegal or something to work alone?"

Fraser fingered his right eyebrow thoughtfully. "I'm an employee of the RCMP, Ray, here in a diplomatic capacity. Occupational Health and Safety regulations don't apply to me."

"And you don't...mind not having one?"

"Customs are somewhat different in Canada. While a guide is usual, it is not required."

"Yeah, but don't guides...do something."

"Ah, well," Fraser shifted uncomfortably. "A guide can make things...easier. But my own training is more than adequate to compensate."

Ray, used to the Mountie runaround, nodded and waited.

Fraser flushed slightly. "When I need an external distraction or some support, there's Diefenbaker."

And, damn, yes, that made sense, didn't it? The wolf. The inconvenient and obnoxious wolf that Benny couldn't live without.

He felt a surge of anger. Fraser was a damn good cop. Well, an incredible cop, actually, and a sentinel besides. And Canada left him to be guided by a wolf and put him on statue duty outside the Chicago consulate rather then, oh, for example, treating him with a little respect and letting him solve crimes in the Yukon where he'd be really efficient.

The waitress appeared with their order. Ray ground his teeth while she set things down and flirted inexpertly with Fraser. When she was gone, Fraser asked, "What, Ray?"

"Why the hell is the RCMP letting you work cases with me for _free_ in your off time when you could be...." he waved his hand vaguely in a direction he thought might be north.

"You know why," Fraser said, dropping his gaze to the Formica table. "I'm very inconvenient. I always was. And now I'm an...embarrassment. A politically awkward reminder."

Ray closed his eyes, lots of other things also coming clear. "Moose Jaw. Why were you pulled out of Moose Jaw?"

Fraser opened his mouth, shut it again. Ray could see him coming to a decision. "I couldn't cope with Moose Jaw." His voice was even and soft, like always, but his eyes were ashamed and a little afraid. "My senses were completely out of control. I was having audio-visual hallucinations. There were...physical symptoms as well."

Ray nodded. Oh, yeah, he bet there were 'physical symptoms.' "Serious ones," he guessed. And his superiors had sent him out of the country. Any foreign embassy, all of them in cities. They hadn't meant Fraser to come back, except in a box. He wouldn't be an embarrassment then.

A hesitation. A nod. Ray pushed aside his anger at RCMP politics and nodded back. "What I don't get, Benny, is why you never mentioned this. I mean, it's kind of important, right?"

"Oh. Well. I'd heard that sentinels were more common in America. I assumed you'd notice almost immediately and think nothing of it. I wasn't exactly subtle."

Ray laughed aloud, remembering the first time he'd seen Fraser tasting mud. "No, you weren't. Some detective I am, huh? But you know, down here, we don't put sentinels on the street. They're, whatchacallit, valuable resources."

"Yes, that strikes me as a terrible waste."

They were quiet for a while. Diefenbaker, finished with his egg, nosed the edge of the table looking for more. Fraser rolled his eyes. "Don't start." For an answer, Diefenbaker turned around and sat with his back to Fraser. "And don't sulk. You've got nothing to sulk about." Ray wondered if there was some way he could get Diefenbaker registered as a service animal. That would make life easier on everyone. He'd do a little research. Or get Elaine to do some research. She liked Diefenbaker.

"So," Ray said, "was your dad--?" How did you ask that? It was embarrassing, somehow. Although why should it be? It wasn't like Ray was asking if insanity or impotence or something else embarrassing ran in the family.

"Was my dad what? Oh, a sentinel? No. My grandmother, his mother...."

"The grandmother who raised you, who taught you three dialects of Chinese and to read music. The librarian. She was a sentinel?"

Fraser nodded.

And okay, that complicated things. Because up until this point Ray had just been assuming that Fraser's grandparents were eccentric. But no, it turned out they were eccentric sentinels, at least one of them. Nothing was ever easy with him.

"Ray...you're not angry, are you? I didn't intentionally deceive you. I wasn't...it didn't seem relevant."

"I'm not mad. Why would I be mad? But you really should tell me, you know? When it's a sentinel thing? It'll save time." He smiled suddenly. "But don't cheat. I don't want you using this to win arguments just because you can. You win enough arguments as it is."

"Ray. I would never--"

"Yes, you would. Yes. You would."

Fraser smiled slightly. "I won't," he promised.

Chapter 2

October 1994

_I just want you to know. I mean I know you are what you are and you can't help that. But it's really hard to have a saint for a friend._

_I'm not a saint, Ray._

_Well, I know that you're not a saint-saint, like when you got your own day. I mean a saint in the sense of a...._

_What, like a metaphor?_

_Yeah, yeah! Like a metaphor._

_Yeah, but Ray. Don't you see? You are as well. We all are. Even them. You know what I mean?_

_That's what scares me--I think that I do._

_Well, that's probably why you and have I have been such close--_

_All right, all right, don't get all mushy on me._

This time there was no crowd of reporters outside the Consulate. The meeting wasn't in the fancy receiving room, either. This time Turnbull escorted Ray to Inspector Thatcher's office, and the only people waiting were the Dragon Lady herself and an eager-looking suit with glasses. They offered him a seat in the comfortable chair. Cooper brought him coffee.

The visitor introduced himself as Inspector Merton from Alberta--or Calgary. Something. Whatever--and told Ray, "I'm very pleased you agreed to meet with us."

A bit puzzled--because although the Dragon Lady didn't often ask to see him, he couldn't ever remember blowing her off--he shrugged and sat back in the chair. "Sure. No problem."

"I'm sure we can come to some kind of satisfactory arrangement."

What the hell? "Is there something we need to come to an arrangement about?" He didn't think there was anything he needed to apologize for. Or explain. The mess with the Bolt Brothers wasn't their fault. And anyway, it was a problem Ray and Fraser had solved. Thatcher had been there, for pete's sake. Even she couldn't have complaints. They'd done a hell of a job.

The suit said, "I think you will agree that in Benton Fraser the RCMP has an invaluable resource. Yesterday's capture of the Sunrise Patriots and the prevention of the bombing of the court's building was shown live, on the news, all across North America."

And, because shit like that didn't happen every day, Ray grinned and said, "Yeah, it was, wasn't it? Nice."

"Constable Fraser is wasted standing guard duty during the day and tracking down purse snatchers and small-time hoods with you during his off hours."

Ray's stomach sank because oh, yeah, he could see where this was going. He wasn't sure why anyone was having this conversation with _him_ but he was pretty sure it would end with Benny heading back to the Yukon.

"Detective Vecchio, do you disagree?" the Dragon Lady was speaking through a smile that looked like clinched teeth.

Ray couldn't manage to return the smile, but he did keep his voice level. "Yeah. I agree. Benny was made for...better than this, anyway."

Inspector Merton's smile wasn't just genuine, it was relieved and eager. "Excellent. We agree in principle. Now we just need to come to terms. The most expedient approach for everyone would be for the RCMP to hire you as a consultant. There's more...leeway with regard to compensation and--frankly--a lot less paperwork."

Any attempt at trying to pretend that he had a clue what was going on melted and turned into a puddle on the floor. "Hire me," he repeated.

"While policy on the matter of guides is somewhat vague," Merton paused, stumbling slightly, "We would never transfer Constable Fraser away from his guide. You would have our full support."

Ray blinked slowly. "You wouldn't transfer Constable Fraser away from his guide." Oh. Holy crap. They were not talking about the wolf here. "Right, no, you wouldn't. That would be inhuman. So you're going to...hire me as a consultant."

"I realize it will be difficult to compete with Chicago. On the surface it may seem that we don't have much to offer in the way of challenge. But you'll have your pick of cases. On both sides of the border. Fraser's too high profile and too useful to be sent to the backwoods looking for lost hunters."

"Right. Of course," Ray said numbly.

"He presents a tremendous opportunity." Smiling. Smiling.

Ray had to nod, because it was true. Fraser's higher-ups had taken their time noticing it, and, at this point, Ray would really rather those higher-ups would just leave them alone, but Fraser was something special. Ray couldn't deny that Benny deserved credit for the work he did.

Merton laid a sheet of paper on low table. "This is our opening offer," he said.

The annual salary was almost twice what Ray was making as a grade two. "Hey, is this in real money?" he asked, trying to cover his surprise.

"You will be paid in Canadian dollars, naturally," Merton said.

It was still a lot of money. A whole lot of money. There was also four weeks' vacation. Canadian health care plan. Mileage. Ray blinked and tried to look casual and wondered what to say.

By the time he had reached Fraser's apartment Ray had slid past 'annoyed' and 'pissed-off' and settled on 'livid.' He didn't knock. Fraser never kept the door locked anyway. Ray threw the door open and closed on Fraser so fast that Fraser ducked a step behind his rickety little kitchen table.

"So here's the thing," Ray exploded. "I can only see two possibilities here. Two whatsis, two scenarios. I mean, maybe I'm missing something, but I really don't think so."

"Um, with regard to what, Ray?" Benny asked almost meekly. Ray couldn't tell if the meekness was because he was yelling or because Benny knew what he was yelling about.

"Today while you were out delivering invitations to the mayor--"

"Thank you notes to the governor."

Ray stumbled, derailed from his train of thought. "What?"

"I was delivering thank you notes to the governor, not invitations to the mayor."

"Right. Whatever. While you were out running pointless errands for the Ice Queen, I was in her office getting a job offer because you won't accept a transfer unless your guide comes along."

"Oh, dear."

"And I can only see two possibilities. One, for some reason you don't want that transfer. Why? I couldn't guess. This assignment was supposed to be a punishment. I'm not sure what you would consider worse. But it's possible. And, hey, fine. You want an excuse to avoid reassignment, I'm down with that. You think the higher-ups aren't inhumane enough to separate you from your guide? Fine. Good. But a little warning would be nice. You know? I mean, it's kind of hard to bluff my way though a job interview when I don't know what I'm bluffing for."

"You're right, Ray, of course--"

"Then there's the other option. Door number two. Behind which I really am your guide, and you just never bothered to mention it. And, hey, it's only been two years. I can see where something like that would slip your mind or whatever, right?"

Benny was looking at Ray with huge, fearful eyes. Ray sagged and dropped into one of the ancient straight-backed chairs and put his head in his hands. "Jeeze, Benny. You wanna tell me why you never mentioned this to me?"

"It never came up?"

It would have been funny, except Fraser actually looked scared and Ray was sick to his stomach. "This your life we're talking about. How could it not come up? What the hell did you think you were doing? What do I know about being a guide?"

"You've been a very good guide, Ray."

"Heh. Yeah. Right."

"The best I've ever had."

"As opposed to the wolf?"

"It's not that I haven't--" Fraser broke off, moving restlessly around the tiny kitchen. "I know what guides do, Ray."

"That makes one of us," Ray muttered.

Fraser sank into the other chair. He ran a thumb thoughtfully over his left eyebrow. "At home I never needed a guide. Not even Diefenbaker. Here...."

Here, in this loud, endlessly confusing place. "I know, Benny."

Fraser raised his eyes. "No. Honestly, you don't. I didn't. In my wildest nightmares, I never imagined Chicago." He took a deep breath. "You have been my anchor. My comfort. The clear path beneath my feet."

"Don't get all poetic."

"Sorry, Ray."

"I mean, we're talking about your life here!"

Fraser laid his hands on the table, open and palm up. "I know it was unfair of me. But you never seemed to mind."

"Mind," Ray closed his eyes miserable. "I'm not a guide. I don't know anything about sentinels."

"If what I needed was a guide who knew more than I do about sentinels...I'm not sure there is anyone who could help me."

Fair point. "Bummer," Ray said.

Fraser smiled thinly. "Yes," he said.

All of this was a side issue anyway, wasn't it? Ray sighed. "What are we going to do, Benny? Are we going to take the job?"

"We, Ray?" Fraser repeated weakly.

"Yeah, we."

"So you're not angry?"

"Of course I'm angry. But that's beside the point. Canada's waiting for an answer, and I have no idea what to say." He pulled a small square of folded paper out of his pocket and handed it across the table.

"From the perspective of a career decision," Fraser said very quietly, "it's a promotion. The position they are offering would bring us high profile cases in both the United States and Canada. By the same token, there would be a great deal of travel involved. And we would be required to work closely with various federal authorities."

"Long vacation," Ray said.

"Yes."

"Good money."

Fraser nodded. "I agree."

"And we're up to the work. I mean, we can do this?"

"Oh, yes. We're quite capable." He wouldn't meet Ray's eyes, though, and this last had been said very carefully.

Ray asked, "What about the sentinel thing? The...health and sanity thing? Can you do this? Strange places? Long hours?"

"Yes," he said.

"What about without me? Could you do it?"

"Not...for very long, no."

"Benny? Do you want to do this?"

"We could do very good work," Fraser hedged.

Ray hated it when Fraser hedged. "But what do you want? You want to be a hotshot special investigator or whatever?"

"I want..." Fraser swallowed hard. "I would prefer to go home. But my superiors aren't offering me that. Chicago...has not been the hardship I expected. I've been content, working with you under the current arrangement." And now--now--he did meet Ray's eyes. "I would be content to continue. Satisfied."

"Then we stay."

Fraser shook his head. "Chicago isn't the issue."

No. Apparently, Ray was the issue. He wasn't 'content' to be in Chicago. He was 'content' to work with Ray. "So? What do you say? Wanna take it? See the world?"

Fraser smiled a little. "I've often been curious about the world."

Ray took that and smiled. "So, let's do it. Go for it. Look out world, here we come."

"You don't have to, Ray," But Fraser's eyes were hopeful now.

"Are you kidding? Have to? This is a serious offer. This is the big time. Let's take a chance, have some fun, _live_ a little."

Fraser smiled, the brightest smile Ray could remember from him. "Live a little," he said.

"This is gonna be fun."

***

It wasn't fun at first. At first there was a lot of paperwork. And long meetings at the precinct, transferring his cases to other detectives. And a little laminated card with Fraser's picture and signature on one side.

"What's this for?" Ray asked.

"Here in the States, there are certain protocols about, well, sentinels. And guides. The card allows you to act as my medical proxy."

Ray looked at the card. "Proxy? What? Like, if you need your appendix out, they operate on me?"

"Well, that would hardly make sense, would it, Ray? In this context, 'proxy' means you can make decisions in my place, or if I am incapacitated."

"I can't make medical decisions. I don't know squat about medicine. Or sentinels. Or, hell, you."

Fraser nodded. "True."

"So, I don't need this."

"I'd prefer you keep it."

Ray turned the little card over in his hands. It made him feel slightly ill. "Why? I won't be making any decisions." It was important to be clear about that.

"It gives you unlimited access. They can't separate us. For any reason."

Ray sighed. "You want me to keep it? Fine, I'll keep it."

After three weeks of tying up old cases and filling out forms and meetings with Canadians in suits, Ray still didn't know what he'd been hired to do, exactly, and he officially went on the payroll tomorrow. Only one of the local colleges had a guide program. Ray went to the library to see what they had. Ten hours later he left feeling sick to his stomach. He'd expected...he'd expected some of it to look familiar. And, okay, yeah, some of it--some of the stuff Fraser did--Ray had seen that. The breathing things. And dropping his heart rate. And "zoning out," not that Fraser did that very often or very deeply.

But all of the guide stuff! It wasn't just a complete surprise, it was deeply weird, borderline insane.

For example, all the touching. That just wasn't...likely. Not that Ray had spent much time hanging with the team up in forensics, but he'd never seen a lot of touching going on there. And Fraser certainly never got all touchy-feely. Not with anyone. Not even with women. Not even with Diefenbaker.

And seven whole books dedicated to sentinel diet? What was up with that? Fraser would eat practically anything. Even that time Frannie had burned the gnocchi, Fraser hadn't even complained. Fraser was a good eater, wasn't he? Not too heavy on the junk food? Reasonable appetite? Right?

And--Drug reactions. Dear Lord. Ray had given Benny and Buck Frobrisher aspirin once. Both of them. Apparently, he was lucky he hadn't killed them right there.

The library closed at midnight, and when they threw him out, Ray went straight to Fraser's squalid apartment building. When he lifted his hand to knock, Fraser opened the door. He was wearing his longjohns and his hair was just slightly flat on one side.

Ray opened his mouth to tell him the deal was off. Ray just wasn't up to it. Guiding was a hard job, and he was just managing being a detective. And if something were to happen to Fraser, and he needed a real guide, and Ray couldn't cope and--No. Sorry. He just couldn't. Fraser deserved someone who knew what the hell he was doing.

Except there Benny was, with his back straight and his jaw set, clearly ready for Ray to say all of that, and he couldn't.

"Is something wrong, Ray," Fraser prompted after a minute or so of silence.

Despite the horrible inventory of disasters on the sentinel shelves, Fraser didn't need a shadow telling him to stay calm and focused while he tried to smell what kind of chili a rat had on its breath. He didn't walk into traffic--well, not by accident. He could track a carrot through a sewer, horseburgers to a slaughterhouse, a bindelstitch back to the shoemaker. And when it came to jumping into the sewer or the dumpster or the mob war without slowing down or looking back or saying 'you don't mind do you?' to his guide, he was a champ.

Fraser didn't need a guide who knew what he was doing. A real guide--an American guide, a properly trained guide--wouldn't get Fraser. Most people didn't get Fraser. Even most Canadians acted like he was from some other planet. Fraser was a lot smarter than 'most people.' And he was good--really good, down in his soul, where he still believed that all humans had sainthood in their grasp if they just had right help getting there. And he played mind games. Really nasty mind games, sometimes, with unstable people holding guns. Some graduate in a suit would just be completely out of his depth, dealing with that sort of thing.

"We get on a plane tomorrow to look into a bunch of interstate trucking hijackings. And I still don't know what the fuck I'm doing. So you need to sit down, right now, and tell me everything."

The tension eased. "Ray. You don't need to do anything differently--"

Ray pushed past him and took a seat at the table. "When Counter stabbed you in the leg--"

"Geiger," Fraser said, shutting the door.

"His name was Geiger Counter?" Ray asked. "Oh, right. You told me before."

Fraser sighed. "No, we didn't actually have that conversation. And his name was Geiger, not Counter."

"Oh. Whatever. When he stabbed you in the leg, you did something about the pain, didn't you?"

Fraser nodded and took a seat in the other chair.

"What about the aspirin? I shouldn't have given you that?"

"It was fine, Ray. I can take aspirin."

"What can't you take?"

"Nothing, so far...."

"But?" Ray prompted, sensing that the 'but' was going to be pretty large.

"I haven't been exposed to very many pharmaceuticals. The more we can avoid, the better."

"Right. Ok. No drugs. What else should I have done?"

"Nothing, Ray, you were--"

"What should I do next time?"

Fraser smiled just a little. "Next time I have a knife buried to the hilt in my leg?"

"Yes. That. What do I need to do?"

Fraser was silent for so long that Ray nearly gave up. "Counting," he said, finally.

"Counting?" Ray repeated.

"My grandmother used to count for me when I was learning to breathe."

"Benny, I don't understand."

Fraser licked his lips nervously. "Breath control is a way of managing pain, Ray. Women in labor, for example--"

"Lamaze," Ray said. His sister Maria had three children.

"But pregnant women study the technique for only a few months, whereas a well trained sentinel...."

"And your grandmother taught you to do this by counting."

"Yes, Ray."

"Okay, then. That's the first thing. You're going to teach me to count."

Chapter 3

Their first case as Canadian big shots was an international hijacking ring; loaded trucks disappearing on both sides of the border and turning up a hundred miles away in a random direction, empty and clean of prints. That case took ten days.

Their next two cases were spent babysitting (sorry, bodyguarding) the children of diplomats; a Canadian ambassador's daughter in New York over the weekend, and the kids of a third cousin (or something) of the Japanese Emperor on a state visit to Ottawa over the rest of the week. The kids were fine; teenagers, but they liked Fraser, so, okay, it wasn't a bad job.

It was New York that was a problem. As crowded and filthy and loud as Chicago had been, it turned out that New York was worse. Fraser didn't sleep the whole weekend. He didn't complain, oh no. He just got kind of jumpy and tense. He didn't talk more than necessary, and although he sounded exactly like himself, perfectly in character, perfectly polite...it set Ray's teeth on edge. The last night Ray finally got Fraser to admit why he was acting like something had crawled up his butt and died. It was like pulling teeth, but when the argument was over Ray had a little information. The noise, the strangeness, the unrelenting confusion was too much, and nothing Fraser tried blotted it out. In the end, Ray read him to sleep. All they had was the hotel Bible, but all it took was a chapter and a half of begats and Fraser was sleeping like a baby.

A kidnapping case in northern Alberta.

A dam breach and flash flood that leveled most of a small town west of Thunder Bay. They spent two days searching for survivors.

A missing persons case in New Mexico. This one didn't involve Canadians at all, but a Mexican official. They were recommended for the case by Anita Cortez who had gotten two promotions since they'd seen her last. This one wasn't a lot of fun. Anita wasn't bad, but the INS and the FBI were both trying to 'help' and succeeded in being as much 'help' as usual. Also, one of the INS guys was an asshole who thought Canadian jokes were funny. After three days of being really patient, Ray had slugged him, which is why, when a few days later they went back to Chicago for a weekend off, they found their own 'liaison officer' waiting. Yes, the United States didn't have anybody that could touch Fraser's record or abilities, but that didn't mean they had to be polite about accepting Canada's generous help.

Well, to be fair, the feds pretended to be polite. The liaison officer (ATF) was personable and respectful, but all three of them knew that the reason he was 'at their disposal' was because Constable Fraser was a barely tolerated Canadian interloper and Ray Vecchio was a loose cannon.

The time Ray would have invested in trying to get rid of their new shadow was spent tracking down a woman named Greta Garbo who liked to plant little fire-bombs. This time the case had come to them: Garbo was the girlfriend of a nutso performance arsonist Ray and Fraser had put away over a year before.

She destroyed Benny's apartment building, did four thousand dollars in damage to the Riv, started a small fire in Ray's house (while Franny and Tony were home, God help them), launched a shoulder-mounted missile into Kowalski's (that was the new guy) car and tried to shoot them. They made the bust, but it took all day, and by then it seemed really petty to complain about the babysitter.

The deductible on the house was a thousand dollars. Well, with the new job, that wasn't impossible, or even very painful. The Riv would be out of commission for two or three weeks, and that did hurt like hell. Maria and Tony and the kids were going to stay with Tony's sister. Frannie was staying with Elaine; apparently, they'd been hanging out together. Frannie was thinking about coming to work for the PD as a civilian aid. Ma could spend a couple of days with Cousin Sophia. Cousin Sophia had married a German guy who'd done pretty good for himself, and she had an extra room. Fraser and Ray would be spending a couple of days at the consulate. Under the circumstances, the Dragon Lady was willing to pretend they were VIPs on assignment from Canada and give them a room.

Ma handled the worst of the paperwork on the insurance. One thing being married to Pop had done, Ma had learned to be very capable, which was good, because Ray was busy. Besides processing Garbo, he had some left-over bureaucratic crap with the Two-Seven to take care of. Fraser amused himself with Kowalski; they went out and tracked down some guy for a twenty year old bank robbery. Or something. It was all pointless anyway, since the statute of limitations had run out, but they had fun.

After that, they got back on the road. A really sad case in Idaho (of all places) involving a protected witness who was being sold out by his brother.

A really weird and irritating week spent protecting some Chicago politician who was dating Kowalski's ex-wife. Guess who had gotten them that job.

A low-level mob guy who'd fled to Canada. That took three weeks of driving around small towns, racing a set of eager bounty hunters and mob enforcers. Oh, and the guy's heavily armed wife. It would have been absolutely horrible (no decent restaurants, no competent dry cleaning, no good coffee), except Fraser was obviously having such a good time.

In a rickety motel somewhere east of why-did-they-bother-to-name-it Manitoba, Ray sent Kowalski out to pick up some dinner (do not think about the fact that the best place to eat in town was apparently the gas station) and said to Fraser, "So what's his deal?"

"His 'deal,' Ray?"

"Yeah. His deal. His thing. There's something off about that guy. You know what I mean?"

Fraser frowned at that. He didn't like the question, which did not necessarily mean that Ray was wrong.

"Any time now," Ray prompted.

"You are aware that there are differences in the ways human brains process information--"

"Yeah, yeah. Been there. Done that. You are the sentinel. What's up with the Bag Lady?"

"He isn't a sentinel." Patient, patient. And tense. This topic had Fraser on edge, though Ray couldn't guess why. "But there are some differences in the way he processes sensory data. I suspect these differences have manifest as attention deficit disorder and rather severe dyslexia."

This was not the answer Ray had expected. He had wondered about drugs. Or possibility some kind of insanity. "I don't get it. He can read."

"Oh, yes. He is quite intelligent. And he has amazing compensatory skills. I suspect his perspective is unique. Or at least unusual. His spatial and pattern-recognition ability is better than mine. His non-textual memory is considerably above average. He has put his gifts to good use; you've noticed yourself he is an excellent detective."

And yes, Ray had no complaints about Kowalski's performance. But gifts? "So--what? is this attention whatever and 'unique spatial perspective' going to get us all killed?"

Fraser glanced away in slight disappointment, but didn't back down. "I'm a higher risk to our safety then he is, Ray. Sentinels are as much a hazard as an asset." Watching Fraser demonstrate that 'polite' and 'pissed off as hell' weren't mutually exclusive was, as always, kind of educating. "He is a very good detective, Ray. I'd appreciate if you kept that in mind."

New York, again, for a case that started simple and wound up involving spies--Canadian, American and Russian--a couple of stiffs, and a very embarrassing incident at the ballet. Ray had to read Fraser to sleep every night again. This time they came prepared. They'd brought a copy of the Administration Manual, which turned out to be way better than begats: "It is the duty of all members who are peace officers, subject to orders of the commissioner, to perform those duties that are assigned to them as peace officers in relation to the preservation of peace, prevention of crime and of offenses of the laws of Canada...."

It turned out Kowalski was sort of a help. Yeah, he was a fed, but he did a lot of the talking to other feds, which was great. Also, Fraser was right: Kowalski was a pretty good detective. He acted way younger than his age and he went on weird tangents, but it worked for him, so that was okay.

After a couple of months though, Ray could tell that Kowalski was having a problem with Fraser. He didn't get a lot of the Mountie-things, the sentinel-things, and the Fraser-things. He took Fraser correcting his grammar as some kind of personal insult. He didn't get why Fraser wouldn't drink. He made fun of Fraser for refusing to drive in cities, not getting that he wasn't being lazy or bossy (but just afraid of dying in a fiery crash because he didn't have the mental band width to manage both the sensory input and traffic decisions). He resented having his life repeatedly endangered in bizarre and unexpected ways.

It came to a head in Penetanguishene, a little nowhere in Ontario where a very convoluted smuggling case had led them. They'd been to four of the five Great Lakes. They hadn't managed to sleep in the same hotel room twice in eight days. The lead they'd had in Penetanguishene had been sketchy, and while Fraser and Kowalski had gone to check it out, Ray, who had lost rock-paper-scissors to the Bag Lady, waited at the police station for a batch of faxes from Ottawa.

As luck would have it, Fraser and Kowalski hit pay dirt in the first five minutes. By the time Ray showed up with the local cops, the drug smugglers were easily identified by their waving semi-automatic weapons, and Ray's partners had to be fished out of Georgian Bay.

Ray was too busy supervising the bust to do anything about Kowalski and Fraser, who were dripping wet, freezing cold, and fighting like cats in a bag. "You're a maniac, Fraser," at top volume carried surprisingly well.

"Ray, you're overreacting." Fraser called them both Ray, which made sense, since both of them went by that. The really weird part was that there wasn't ever much confusion about who he meant. "Ray" meaning Ray and "Ray" meaning Kowalski didn't sound the same coming out of Fraser's mouth.

"I'm not overreacting."

"What do you propose we do? We are officers of the law." Ray glanced over his shoulder. Benny was getting passionate, which wouldn't end well if Kowalski was getting grumpy. He needed to get them out of there.

"I know that. We're cops. I don't have a cape. You don't have a cape--"

"No," Fraser explained patiently, trying to distract Kowalski from his rant, "but I do wear a uniform, you carry a badge, and my Sam Browne is sort of like--"

"Why are you arguing with me?" Kowalski was shouting and waving his arms. Damn. Fraser was usually better at deescalating than this. Ray passed the perp he was cuffing to one of the local guys and hurried to the strip of grass where his partners had withdrawn to scream at each other.

"I am not arguing with you!"

"Yes, you are. Yes, you are. You're arguing with me, you're correcting. You're niggling. You're doing that thing with the Ts and the Is, and I say 'A' you say 'B,' I say 'night,' you say 'day'--"

"I think you should be reasonable. I don't do it all the time." Now--now--Fraser's voice had a gentling, almost placating edge to it, but Ray could have told him it was far too late. He laid a hand on the wet wool of Fraser's shoulder, and tugged backward, trying to get a little distance between the combatants.

Fraser, a tree, didn't budge. Kowalski didn't notice the attempted interruption. "Look you just did it again! You did it again!"

"I--"

"It's like some kind of disease!"

"It's not a disease--"

Ray stepped between them and shoved them apart. "Knock it off, all right? Just cool it."

Kowalski was pissed off enough to have plenty extra to share around. "How have you worked with him for two years? Why haven't you killed him yet? Nothing is ever good enough for him--"

Fraser tried to get around Ray to face Kowalski directly. "That's not true--"

Kowalski backed up and threw up his hands. "Case in point," he said. He turned away and stalked off. On the other side, Fraser deflated and turned in the opposite direction. After only a moment's stunned hesitation, Ray followed him.

Fraser stopped and leaned against the lee side--never mind that Ray now knew what 'lee side' was--of a big tree and closed his eyes. Working in Canada, he was wearing the brown dress uniform, not the flashy red one. His hair was still dripping onto the collar.

Ray folded his arms. "So what happened?"

Fraser sighed and waved at the warehouse overlooking the bay. "We were pinned down on the roof. Ray had dropped his weapon. I was nearly out of bullets. We didn't expect you to arrive so quickly with help. So." He waved at the water.

"What crawled up his butt and died?"

"He can't swim. Really, Ray, Ray's reaction isn't unreasonable. It was quite traumatic--"

"I got it."

"He's been muttering all week about a transfer," Fraser's chin was tucked in to his chest. His eyes were on the ground. "I think he's going to take it. I...seem to have failed in my efforts to establish rapport."

"You'll miss him," Ray translated.

"Very much, so, yes."

Disappointed. Ray felt horribly disappointed. He didn't know at what until the words came out of his mouth: "He wouldn't have made a very good guide."

Fraser looked up in astonishment. "I don't need another guide." Astonishment turned to fear. "Do I?"

"No! No. I. Just. So, you're not looking to trade in on a newer model." He tried to laugh it off, failed miserably.

Very, very, very patiently, Fraser said, "I wasn't interested in him as a guide, Ray."

"You were interested in him for something else?"

Still very patient. "Yes."

Oh. "Oh. You were--You like him."

Fraser looked away. He was blushing a little.

"Oh," Ray said again. He should probably say something supportive, but really, he was too surprised to come up with anything. It was easy to forget that Fraser swung both ways when most of the time he didn't seem to swing in any direction at all.

It had only come up once in all the time they'd known one another. Ray had been working on a case, a dead novelist. The suspects were down to two: the man's lover (with jealousy as the motive) and the man's cousin (with control over the trust fund as the motive). It hadn't been one of those weird-ass cases that Fraser put a lot of leg-work into, but he had been around during the week Ray had worked it, and the whole week he'd been looking at Ray with wary puzzlement.

This had all been after Ray had figured out the sentinel thing, and he'd assumed he was missing something obvious that Fraser was too embarrassed or to polite to mention. Finally, with the evidence report in his hands and on his way to the car to make the arrest (the cousin), he was seized by the last-minute fear that he had everything wrong and hissed at Fraser, "Tell me, all right? Whatever it is, just tell me?"

For a moment Fraser had looked at him in blank confusion before spreading his hands innocently and saying, "It's nothing, Ray, really. I just--you're being remarkably professional. I'm very impressed."

And that had explained absolutely nothing. Not sure if he should feel insulted or not, he'd detoured into the nearest closet so they could speak privately and growled, "Is there some reason that surprises you? Am I usually not professional?"

Fraser had tried to twist his hat in his hands, but crowded in with the brooms and the mop bucket, there wasn't room. "No. Of course, you are very professional. But one hears things. About cases like this. In places like Chicago. And police officers aren't always. That is, sometimes. Well."

"Sometimes they're bigots," Ray said, irked, embarrassed, aching for Fraser's sense of justice.

"Yes, exactly."

"You assumed I was a bigot."

"Well, no. Not assumed. You aren't responsible for the practices and values of your culture--"

Which was bullshit, Ray knew, at least to Benny. "My old man was a bigot," he said flatly.

"Ah. I see."

"When I was fifteen, I went through this rebellion phase. I hung out with everybody on his list. You know? I worked them out in order of how much he hated them. It went, Blacks, Queers, Germans, Japs, Jews, and Southerners. Not Mexicans, he got along with them. I don't know why. And Chinese were okay. I never got that, either. What's the difference, right? Why one and not another?" Pop being dead had saved him from having to live with the bastard, but it hadn't gotten him out of having to be ashamed of him.

"Prejudice isn't logical, Ray."

"I did it, you know, because I was pissed at him. Right? Just for that. But it turns out...it was all a load of bull. All those other people I hung out with, they were all better than him. Hey, maybe that was his problem...."

"I understand."

"So. Now I'm going to go be professional. You wanna come along, or can I drop you somewhere?"

"Thank you. I'll join you, if you don't mind."

Ray was already reaching for closet door when something in Benny's voice stopped him. He let his hand fall. "Homosexual?" he asked very gently, thinking that Benny would appreciate a word that was more formal and respectful than Pop's 'Queer.'

"Bisexual, actually," Benny breathed.

"You could have told me."

"Yes, I realize that." The 'now' was unsaid. Ray felt a little sick. Fraser really had thought it would matter.

Fraser started for the door. Ray caught his arm. "Even if--I wouldn't care, Benny. I wouldn't care."

That had been the God's honest truth. Ray didn't care or even much remember. But while a little detail like that wasn't anything to Ray, he could see why it would be really important to Fraser. As far as he could tell, Fraser's love life was even more of a wreck than Ray's. Fraser hadn't really dated since he'd come to Chicago, and the two exes Ray had met--Mark Smithbauer and Victoria Metcalf--hadn't been exactly winners. Finally--finally, Fraser had found somebody he wanted, and it was a scruffy little ATF agent with no maturity and no taste.

"Benny? Does he--? I mean, how does Kowalski--?"

Fraser stared into the distance. "Judging by his scent, he returns my...interest. But...I can't seem to do anything right. Every time I open my mouth, he gets angry." He rubbed his forehead. It looked like he was trying to physically push his feelings back inside.

"Yeah, okay. I get it."

He sighed heavily. "He just took the car and left us here."

"Never mind. We'll get a lift with the cops."

That evening, Fraser talked Kowalski into going for a walk with him, hoping to bury the hatchet. Before they could work out their issues, though, they found a dying pirate with a knife buried in his back.

Unlikely? Yes. But somehow not surprising after working with Fraser for a couple of years.

The case led them higgledy-piggledy up and down the shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, either tracking a guy named Calhoun (or Hester) who apparently hadn't been lost at sea when the Wailing Yankee went down (reports to the contrary notwithstanding), or tracking a ghost ship named the Robert McKenzie. It was hard to tell. As cases went, it made even less sense than usual. All the searching didn't turn up answers, but gold. According to Fraser, about seven hundred dollars worth in the bottom of a foot locker that Kowalski and Fraser's dying pirate had hidden away.

Go figure.

Meanwhile, Fraser had some serious wrath going, but Ray couldn't tell if he was mad at some seagoing yahoos who might be using a 'haunted ship' scam to scare other ships away from some unknown spot on the map, or if he was mad at Kowalski for being a prick. Kowalski was being a prick. While Ray was on the phone to the nearest RCMP base to get the serial number on the gold check, Kowalski started in pushing Fraser's buttons: "Told you. He was a pirate. I bet Hester's a pirate, too." Kowalski was smug enough to irritate Ray, and he wasn't even really listening.

"Possibly," Fraser conceded. Ray was kind of surprised he didn't just abandon this argument and try to move on, because no matter how it ended it wasn't going to be pretty.

"What do you mean, 'possibly?' He had a treasure chest. Here's the treasure."

"One bar?"

"Well, where there's one, there's a pile, you know. That's the way treasure works."

Ray, reading the serial number from the bar of gold into the phone, missed the next bit. He offered to hold, but the constable on the other end of the line told him that the computer was down, and it would be at least three hours before she would have something for him.

The argument had heated up. Fraser hadn't raised his voice, but his fists were clinched in suppressed frustration. "For the last time, we do not know that he's a pirate. For all we know, he might be an accident-prone accountant."

"You ever try to run a calculator with a hook?"

"No, but appearances can be deceiving." Fraser had forced himself down to the calm, cajoling tone of voice. He was trying to distract Kowalski with humor. Right now, though, Kowalski didn't have either the patience for Fraser's sense of humor or the desire to give him the benefit of a doubt. "You know, I once knew a trapper in Great Slave Lake who ran his trap lines dressed in a three-piece suit. He looked like a banker. Of course, he carried his bait in his pocket, so the smell, it was - well, that's a different story."

"Can you just once--once--admit you were wrong?"

"Ray, if there are any pirates on the Great Lakes, which I sincerely doubt, I think it's highly unlikely that they would go about dressed like some character invented by Robert Louis Stevenson."

Christ. "Benny, can I have a word with you?" Ray said quickly.

"We're in the middle of an argument here," Kowalski growled.

"Ray, maybe--"

"It's a guide thing. I need you now." He grabbed Fraser by the arm and pulled him several feet away. "Look. Fraser. He's not me."

Fraser gaped blankly. "I'm aware of that, Ray," he said finally. "He looks nothing like you."

"No. No. Benny, see. You're trying to handle him like you handle me. Only what works for me, it don't work for him."

Fraser blinked unhappily. "I don't understand."

"When I'm mad at you, you just keep talking till I calm down and give in. Right? You just keep nudging until I see what you see. But Kowalski, it doesn't work with him. He actually listens to what you're saying."

Fraser's confusion didn't fade. "You don't listen?" He nodded once. "Actually, I sometimes suspected--"

"No. Benny. Damn. I listen, I just don't listen. Kowalski takes it all personally. See? He doesn't get when you're teasing." Ray glanced over Fraser's shoulder. Kowalski had folded his arms and he was glaring at the ground. "He thinks you really think he's an idiot."

Confused turned to horrified very quickly. "What do I do?"

"Well--for a start, don't argue!"

"He jumps to conclusions! He never stops to think! It's very irritating--"

Ray shrugged. "Cope," he said.

Fraser took a deep breath. "Understood," he said. He walked back to Kowalski, set his feet, squared his shoulders, and said meekly, "Pirate."

Kowalski scowled. "So--what? You listen to him, but you won't listen to me? What am I, chopped liver?"

Ouch. Some days you couldn't win.

Eventually the three of them shipped out on a cargo boat out of Sault Saint Marie. They'd found Hester and a couple of other guys who were supposed to have died on the Wailing Yankee, but still didn't know what they were up to. They did overhear them talking--more than once--to other crew members about the Robert Mackenzie, but all that did was tell them they were on the right track, not where that track was leading.

Apparently, their quarry had been on the look-out for them. The first clue Ray had that they'd been made was waking up with a terrible headache. He was also freezing cold and listening to Kowalski scream frantically for help.

Shivering, he tried to pull away from the cold, but he was lying down, lying down in water, and when he moved, it flooded his mouth.

Kowalski grabbed his hair and pulled him back to air. He didn't pause in the screaming. Ray tried to reach for his throbbing head, to sit up out of the water, to pull away from the noise. The movement was brought to a sharp end by a pain in his wrist. Cuffed, he was cuffed. Ray tried to look, and Kowalski grabbed his head again, snarling at him--between calls for help--not to drown.

Ray thrashed in water, tangled in Kowalski's body, and sort of made it onto his knees. His head hurt. "What the hell happened?" he gasped. Cold, God he was cold.

"I don't know. They were yelling up on deck, I think. They saw the ghost ship."

"The--What, the Mackenzie?" Ray pulled at his wrist. He and Kowalski were cuffed together through an equipment rack bolted to the floor. It didn't give at all, despite the frantic tugging. "Son of a bitch!"

The door--the hatch--behind Kowalski slammed open, revealing Fraser. He was the Cavalry coming over the hill. He splashed across the room and dropped to his knees in the water that was already well over a foot deep.

"Frase! Get us outta here!" Kowalski hollered.

Ray pulled at the handcuff again. "I'll kill them. Where are they?"

Fraser knelt to examine the hands and cuffs, which were both under water. "The crew? Well, they're in a lifeboat," he said.

"A lifeboat," Ray repeated numbly.

"Well, yes. Their ship is sinking. It was fired upon." Fraser made it sound almost reasonable.

"Who fired on us?" Ray asked.

Fraser scowled. "The Wailing Yankee pretending to be the Robert Mackenzie."

"Will you two stop it?" Kowalski was long past frantic and into shrill. "The ship is sinking!"

"Ray--"

"The ship is sinking!"

"Ray. Ray calm down. We need your key." Still reasonable. Still calm. Ray could understand why Kowalski found that irritating.

"What Key?"

"The key to your handcuff. Where is it?"

"How stupid do you think they were, Fraser? They took the key."

Fraser turned to Ray. "Ray?" he asked hopefully.

"Don't look at me. What kind of idiot takes his handcuffs undercover?"

"Oh, dear," Fraser said. The water was already up to Ray's hips. Of course, the depth was only a problem because they were chained to the floor and couldn't stand up. "I'm going to have to pick the lock."

He disappeared under the water. Ray could feel the tugging. Fraser was good with locks, but a lock he could barely see? With cold hands? In a hurry?

The seconds stretched out. The water was rising faster. In no time it was shoulder-deep and he could feel a definite tilt to the floor. Yet another item on the list of unlikely things he'd never pictured happening: going down with the ship.

Kowalski, trying to pull away from the water and peer into it at the same time, shouted, "Fraser! Hurry up! Fraser!"

Long seconds more, and Fraser was still under the surface. Two minutes now? Three? The water was up to their chins. The only thing keeping Ray from panicking was that Kowalski was doing such a nice job of it, what with his head start and all. "Fraser! Fraser!"

Fraser came up sleek and fast, like some kind of water-animal. He popped a hand over Kowalski's mouth. "Ray, please. You have to stop yelling. The echo in here is just, well," he shuddered miserably. "It's very...jarring."

"Oh, for pete's sake," Ray muttered. His head was a blossom of pain, and his vision was blurry--although that last was probably from water in his eyes.

"Get your gun," Kowalski said as Fraser released his mouth. "Get your gun, get your gun."

"Oh. I imagine you would like me to shoot off your handcuffs."

"Yeah, sometime this week would be nice, Fraser."

Ray tilted his head back to keep his nose clear and held very still. This was...a bad idea, he was fairly sure. They were in a little metal room. That bullet was going to bounce. On the other hand the only other choice was drowning.

When the link gave, Ray sprung backwards, falling, the water closing completely over his head. His feet scrambled for purchase, but he had neither balance nor traction.

He knew Fraser's hand, bruisingly strong as it caught him by the armpit and hauled him up to standing. "Ray?" Fraser asked softly. And then he cursed. He actually cursed. "Damn, you smell like lake and blood, Ray." His hands went to the throbbing cut on the back of Ray's head.

"Pull it together," Ray said as firmly as he could. "We have to get out of here."

Fraser drew a deep breath. "Calhoun and the others disabled communications on the bridge. We need to get a message out."

"Of course we do," Kowalski grumbled.

Fraser squared his shoulders. "There is a secondary radio on--"

Ray pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and pushed it into Fraser's hands. "Or, you know, we could call?"

It was a very expensive cell phone. It had come with job. Waterproof casing, satellite uplink, twenty-number memory.

"Why didn't we use that sooner?" Kowalski snapped.

"To call who? Fraser? 911 to the mainland? I don't even know whose jurisdiction we're in! Do you know the number for the coastguard?"

They called their supervisors in Ottawa. They did it on the run, with the water rising around their waists. Everything that wasn't bolted down was floating. And the floor was tilted. And Ray had no idea where they were going, although Fraser did, because apparently he'd memorized the ship's blueprints or something.

They passed a closed door that had a small, round window in it. A fish was swimming past. Ray cursed. Kowalski waved his arms and yelled frantically. Fraser laid a quelling hand on both of them. "Oh, well. Look at that," he said brightly.

"It's a fish," Ray said numbly.

"Yes," Fraser agreed. "It's an encouraging sign."

"That's not a sign, Fraser, it's a fish." Apparently, Kowalski was as unimpressed with Fraser being reassuring as he was with Fraser being conciliatory or funny.

"Well, it's a trout, to be exact, which is a sign that the water quality of the Great Lakes is actually returning."

Ray had worked with Fraser long enough to find this not only reassuring, but hysterically funny. Or possibly that was the head injury talking. Kowalski disagreed. He hadn't been hit on the head. "Look, why are you arguing with me, Fraser? It's not a sign, it's a fish. That means the boat's sinking and we're all about to die!"

Ray nudged Fraser in the ribs, catching him mid-protest. Instead, Fraser said, "Well, yes, it's a sign of that also." Turning a corner, he froze. "Oh, dear."

"I really hate 'oh dear,'" Ray muttered.

"What?" Kowalski, in the third place behind them, craned his neck forward.

Fraser winced. "I was hoping... but no, we're blocked. Ray, close that door. Ray, stand over here. We're going to have to equalize the water level and then swim under water to the next section."

"No," Kowalski said. "Uh, uh. Never. No way."

"It's our only option, Ray."

"You call that an option?"

"Well, no. I admit it's not much of an option. Would you rather wait and drown...eight minutes from now?"

"Will you stop acting like this is some kind of game? Can you take anything seriously? Anything at all?"

"Why are you yelling at me? Does it help? Is anything better now?"

"I am not yelling at you." Kowalski yelled.

Ray sighed and closed the hatch behind them. He could already see how this was going to end: with everyone under water.

"You are. You are yelling at me. Why are you yelling at me?"

"I can't swim."

Fraser blinked and swayed slightly. "Oh," he said. "Right. Right. Well, then, a quick lesson is probably what's called for right now." He leaned in and put a hand on Kowalski's shoulder. Probably, he meant to be encouraging. "I want you to try to think about...think of yourself as a flower that opens by day and then it closes down at night...."

The lights were in waterproof housings and hooked up to batteries. At least they wouldn't be swimming through darkness. That was something, wasn't it? While Kowalski practiced blooming like a flower, Ray caught Fraser's arm. "Let me go first. You stay close to him."

"Ray--I--"

"I know. You're the sentinel, you should go first. But you're the better swimmer, and if he gets into trouble, I...You stay with him."

"Understood."

The water was cold, but not so murky that Ray couldn't see the beacon of light at the far end. Ray wasn't the best swimmer, and this was--geeze, far--but it was a straight line. Straight ahead, through the door, up the stairs. Moving through the water was easy enough. He didn't much notice the cold anymore.

Across the long floor.

Through the door.

Up the stairs, pulling himself hand by hand using the rail.

Ray's head found air. He gasped, sharp gulps of air tasting flat on his tongue. Water ran in his eyes. Seconds passed. Too many of them. Ray took a deep breath and set his feet to push off.

Fraser shot out of the water, hauling Kowalski by the collar of his shirt.

Sagging with relief, Ray caught Fraser's arm and pulled them both to the edge. Fraser was panting. Kowalski was coughing and spitting out water.

"Keep moving, keep moving, come on," Ray urged. The water was still rising.

"What the hell was that?" Kowalski choked, climbing out of the water.

"What was what?" Fraser shook the water out of his ears and followed him out onto the deck.

"That thing you were doing with your mouth. What was that?"

"Oh, that." Fraser looked away and tugged at his collar. "That's buddy breathing. You seemed to be in a bit of a, well, having a problem. I have excess lung capacity, so...."

Kowalski looked at him doubtfully. "Buddy breathing."

"Standard procedure," Fraser sounded stiff, almost defensive. Ray could not imagine how Kowalski didn't see right through him.

He clearly didn't, though. He was frowning at Fraser, subdued, uncertain. "Good," he said. "Okay... All right. Nothing's, like, changed or anything, right?"

"No," Fraser said, visibly relieved.

Ray smacked him on the temple with the back of his hand. "Idiot," he said. He turned to Kowalski. "You hurt him, and they will never find the body. Now can we get out of here?"

It was dangerous, being near a sinking ship. Going down, the massive bulk sucked water with it, making a horrible turbulence. Fraser found something for them to cling to, used a couple of fire extinguishers as a power source, and managed to get them out of the danger zone. Or at least the danger presented by the sinking ship. The lifeboats containing the ships crew were being picked up by the 'ghost ship' anchored close by.

Separated from the others and hidden by the vast night, they didn't have a hard time sneaking aboard the ship. After the darkness of the water, the deck lights blinded Fraser, and Ray pulled him into the shadow between two pallets of fifty-gallon drums. "You okay?" he whispered, as always, uncertain what he'd do if Fraser really did get into trouble.

Fraser nodded, motioning them to silence, his head cocked, listening.

Ray held very still.

"They've secured the crew. They're planning to kill them. I think they're going to sink the ship."

"This ship?" Kowalski asked. "The last ship wasn't, like, their quota?"

Fraser stood cautiously, looked around. "It's...some kind of salvage operation? There's a sub there in the hold. And diving equipment."

"Are they salvaging this stuff?" Ray tapped one of the drums beside them.

Frowning, Fraser pulled out his pocket knife and pried the plug out of the top of the nearest drum.

"Oil--?" Kowalski whispered, peering over his shoulder.

Fraser touched the tip of his finger to the rim of the hole and tasted the contents. At once he jerked back and spat onto the deck.

"What, you found something you can't eat?" Kowalski asked.

Very carefully, Fraser put the lid back. "It's oil laced with PCBs, probably from discarded transformers."

"You can taste all that?" Kowalski asked.

Impatient, Ray pushed him out of the way. "It's a sentinel thing, now shut up. Fraser--"

"Ray," Fraser said sternly, "That was very impolite."

Ray's head hurt. A lot. Slowly and carefully, he said. "I don't understand. What is in that drum?"

"PCBs, Ray. They're toxic waste. This is--this has to be illegal dumping." Abruptly he turned away, creeping silently among the pallets of drums. He pried another drum open, tasted another vat of chemicals.

"Don't do that," Ray hissed.

"Very high arsenic content."

This time Ray and Kowalski spoke in unison, like some kind of chorus. "Spit it out."

"No, you know, a little bit of arsenic can't hurt you."

"This is not a little bit," Ray hissed, waving his arms at the pallets of drums around them.

Fraser raised his head cautiously and looked around. "Yes. There must be thousands of barrels here." His eyes hardened. "Diabolical. They're going to sink this ship. The combination of arsenic, oil, PCBs....it could lead to an ecological disaster of unimaginable proportions."

"But why would they do that?" Ray asked. "They brought a lot of garbage out into the middle of the lake to--oh." There was a lot of money in illegal dumping. Hazardous waste was expensive to dispose of. "Even an operation as complicated as this would make money. How much damage are we talking about here, Fraser?"

"This vessel lies up-current of Six Fathom Shoal, and a toxic spill here would contaminate the St. Mary's River, which is one of the most fertile spawning ground of the entire Great Lakes, and that in turn could set off a chain reaction that could lead to, well, it could lead to the destruction of life in the entire Great Lakes sys-- Ray? Ray? What are you doing?"

He meant the other Ray. Kowalski had wandered off and was peeking under a tarp. He motioned them over. "Does this look like garbage to you, Fraser?"

Ray squinted at the stack Kowalski had found. It seemed to be made of shiny, irregularly-shaped bricks. It looked familiar, but for some reason, his mind couldn't seem to make sense of it.

"It looks like gold," Fraser said, sounding unimpressed. Once he heard the word, though, the image took shape in Ray's mind. And he was impressed. The stack was taller than Kowalski. That much gold--

Well, it couldn't be gold. That didn't make any sense. Who would throw gold out with the trash...on the bottom of Lake Superior? Was it fake? Was it--?

Ray groaned, feeling stupid. Fraser had said, 'salvage operation.' They weren't dumping gold, they were bringing it up. "Fraser, about how long do you think it will take for the Coast Guard to get here?"

"With the recent budget cuts, at least two more hours. They'll load the gold onto those small boats over there, abandon ship, and then sink her with charges set in the cargo hold."

"Explosives? How do you know?" Kowalski asked.

"I could see them earlier," Fraser sighed. "Some of them, anyway. If the crew moves quickly enough, they may get out of here before the Coast Guard arrives."

Ray found himself nodding. He could see where Fraser was going. "We have to slow them down."

Kowalski had a gift for chaos. They sabotaged anything that could move heavy cargo--hoists and cranes and those little machines that weren't fork-lifts. They got to the winch that would take up the anchor (just because they found themselves with opportunity). They pulled the spark plugs on the little boats that the crew had to be planning to use in their escape.

Some of their tampering got discovered pretty quickly. For the first fifteen or twenty minutes, though, it was just 'broken equipment.' There was a lot of angry yelling, but no search.

"We're moving too slowly," Fraser said softly. They were hiding in the cargo hold, crouched into a corner. "The Coast Guard will be here soon."

"That's a good thing," Kowalski said.

Fraser shook his head. "They fired on the Henry Allen. We have to find the gun, or when the Coast Guard gets here, they will be met with force," he sighed. "Also, they have hostages."

Dawn was breaking, taking away most of their cover. And Fraser was right about time. There wasn't much of it. "We have to split up," Ray said. "Kowalski gets the gun, I'll free the hostages, Benny--you have to get the explosives. As many as you can." He was the only one who could smell them.

The coast guard appeared just as Ray was taking out the man who was guarding the prisoners from the Henry Allen. The small cannon got off a single shot, but at the same time it launched backwards and dropped into the hold. Kowalski, bless him, had gotten to the breaks.

Unarmed, now, and dragging an anchor, the disguised Wailing Yankee tried to flee.

Ray was armed, now. He'd taken a gun from the guy he'd knocked out. Some of the Coast Guard had managed to board, and there were fights breaking out on both the front and back of the ship. The struggle was short, but intense. A helicopter was circling. A pair of bullets plonked into the drum Ray was using for cover, sending out twin streams of grayish oil. But it wasn't the fighting that worried him. Fraser hadn't had enough time to take out all the explosives. Not nearly enough time. The pirates might actually be desperate or angry enough to sink the boat they were still on--

And then suddenly it was over, and Ray was surrounded by Coast Guard. He dug out his RCMP ID and handed over the captured gun....

God, what a day. Even with Fraser--and days were a longer and weirder with Fraser than they'd ever been before him--this was way over the top....

Ray met up with his partners climbing up out of the hold. Kowalski was bouncing, positively glowing. "You shoulda seen him! He was incredible. Wallace, that guy in charge, he was trying to escape, and Fraser just--Man, can you believe this? Is this one hell of a collar or what?"

"Definitely or what," Ray said. He hadn't noticed his headache in a while, but it was threatening to come back. He was tired. He was filthy. He was hungry. And his underwear was still wet. "What do you say, Benny? Can we go home now?" Not that any of them knew where home was anymore. More often than not, 'home' was the most recent hotel room, crowded onto whoever's bed watching hockey and eating cold pizza. But hey, Ray would take that. "Benny?" He turned to see why Fraser hadn't answered.

Fraser turned grey and collapsed to the deck. He fell sideways, like a tree being cut down. Ray wasn't fast enough to catch him.

"Was he hurt?" Ray snapped at Kowalski as he ran his hands over Fraser's body. He was still dressed in the ratty sweater and torn jeans of his sailor disguise. Ray pushed the sweater up, looking for blood. There was no sign.

Kowalski was panicking, but since his panic took the form of yelling for a medic, Ray couldn't write him off as useless. He ignored the noise and turned Fraser gently, passing fingers through the thick, soft hair searching for blood or a lump. "Benny?"

Fraser's eyes opened. "I think we have a problem, Ray," he muttered.

Ray repressed his surge of relief. "What happened? Where are you hurt?"

Fraser turned his head away. "Sorry...." And then, "Sorry. I'm reacting to the toxic waste. Ray, I'm sorry."

Ray's heart sank. Benny injured? Easy-peasy, usually. It seemed to bother Ray a lot more than Benny. He did his own first aid and he controlled his own pain. Sure, you had to watch the doctors to make sure they didn't give him anything sentinels shouldn't get, but, he always came out okay. But toxics? ...oh. god. Even as little as Ray knew, he knew that sentinels and poisoning were a bad mix.

"I'm so sorry," Fraser ground out. His eyes were squeezed shut, whether because of shame or pain, Ray didn't know.

"Forget it. It's okay. Benny? We need to know what....I mean, this boat is full of different kinds of junk. Do you know what you're poisoned with?" Because, hey, sometimes Fraser seemed to know everything, and so he might know this, and that would help. The doctors would know how to treat him, if they knew what made him sick.

Fraser shook his head.

Damn. "What are your symptoms? Where does it hurt?"

"I shouldn't talk about that." A pause for breath. "I'm pretty sure...this is an uptake distortion response. Although I've never had a bad one before. My timing--"

"Benny, tell me what's wrong."

"Well, I can't, Ray. I don't think I should talk about it--"

God. Damn. It. "Was it a skin exposure? Do we need to get these clothes off?" Ray leaned forward and sniffed, but all he could smell was Fraser and lake. And why the hell bother anyway? He wasn't a sentinel. "Some of the stuff you ate?"

"It's not the exposure, Ray, it's my awareness of the exposure."

Forcing back his panic, Ray moved around so that his back was braced against something and pulled Fraser into his lap. "Tell me what's wrong," he whispered.

"My brain is aware of the toxins. And it's making me sick."

"I know it's making you sick--wait. Your brain is making you sick? You're doing this to yourself?" Ray squeaked.

Fraser nodded once. "The phenomena--"

"Well, stop it, all right? Just stop it!"

Kowalski, who Ray had forgotten, dropped down beside them and got up in Ray's face. "Hey. Don't be yelling at him."

Ray firmly pushed Kowalski away. "So, what, a decade you spend taking care of yourself in the frozen wasteland and now you decide to go all high maintenance? I don't think so. Benny, quit it."

Fraser turned his head into Ray's shoulder, so that his face was pressed up next to Ray's armpit. And, yes, Ray had read enough about guiding to know that this was a safety-seeking gesture. Normal. Healthy. Weird, but right.

And as scary as hell, because Fraser had never done it before. He'd never needed it before. Or at least, never needed it badly enough that he gave in to the impulse. Ray pulled in his panic and patted Fraser's shoulder. And then Fraser said, "Well, yes, obviously he's right. Is it too much to ask that you contribute something helpful?"

Kowalski, still close, shot Ray a worried look. "I didn't say anything," he said.

Ray sighed. "He's not talking to you." Ray cradled the back of Fraser's head with his hand. The hair was slightly damp with sweat. "Your dad here Benny?"

Fraser looked up, not toward Ray's face, but over his shoulder. "You can see him?"

"No, can't see him." Fraser had only admitted to conversations with invisible people a couple of times over years, but Ray had caught him at it too many times to write off. And now, with Benny grey as paste and covered in sweat, wasn't the time to pretend he just talked to himself. "Your dad was a guide, wasn't he? What's he telling you to do?"

Fraser shuddered. "He says I should suck it up and show some self control."

Ray pulled Fraser closer and whispered, "He's right, Benny. That's what you need to do. You've got more self control than anybody I've ever met." Ray had never met Robert Fraser, and he'd only heard a few stories about the Fraser grandparents. Most of what he knew--frankly--horrified him. They'd been uptight and uncompromising and so perfect it had been cruel. They'd been demanding and proper and Ray resented the hell out of them on Fraser's behalf. Who made kids stand up straight all the time and always gave them books on holidays instead of toys? Right now, though, he could easily see why their over-achieving child-rearing practices had been necessary. "They taught you to stay alive. They made you strong enough to fight this thing. I know you can do this. If anybody in the world has the self-control to fix this, it's you."

"You don't understand," the whisper was soft, ashamed. "I'm fighting myself. The problem is me--"

Ray waited for a moment, hoping Bob Fraser's ghost would chime in with something helpful. Apparently, no dice, because Fraser just burrowed deeper into Ray's arms.

Ray looked up. "Where's that medic?"

Kowalski shook his head. "Coming, but...they don't have anybody who knows anything about sentinels. They're bringing in a helicopter, but it'll be another twenty minutes."

"Fuck." Ray was on his own, and Benny was fighting himself. "Hey," he exclaimed, "it's not you, though, is it? It's the lake. You weren't thinking about all this toxic waste in you, you were thinking about it in the lake."

Fraser lifted his face. "I--the lake?"

"The lake, Benny. But the boat isn't going to sink. The toxic waste is going to be properly disposed of. The lake isn't going to die. It's okay. It's safe. It's over. The lake is okay. No dead fish. Hey. We saw a carp, right?"

"Trout."

"Right, we saw a trout. It's an encouraging sign." Ray was holding on very tightly, but his voice didn't sound desperately afraid. "You're tired, yeah, and surrounded by thousands of gallons of toxic waste, but you're okay, the lake is okay...hey, a little arsenic won't hurt anybody, right?"

"Right, Ray." Under Ray's hands, Fraser's rigid shoulders gave a little. "Would you count for me, Ray?"

Fraser's 'counting' was backward from six, over and over, slowly. He had told Ray he could use it to alter his level of consciousness. So far, they hadn't used it for anything but practice. Ray whispered the numbers to the top of Fraser's head until the medics appeared with a stretcher.

Ray and Fraser were whisked away on a helicopter. Kowalski had to stay behind to try to explain what was going on to the Coast Guard, but Ray really didn't have the energy to worry about that. Their partner would catch up with them sooner or later. Whatever. The important thing was Fraser had gone from grey to pale, and that was good.

The trip by chopper was weirdly short. Ray wasn't quite sure where they were taken--even what side of the border they were on--but the emergency room doctor had worked with sentinels before, so who the hell cared which country they were in? Even as Fraser was being shifted into a bed, he and the doctor were chattering about 'elevated this' and 'irregular that,' and 'neurological something.' The exam was quick, but through the whole thing the doctor asked questions and Fraser...answered with a lot of big words that made absolutely no sense to Ray but seemed to make the doctor happy.

An hour later, Fraser had been through a 'decon shower' and been admitted overnight for observation. He'd improved from pale-white to pale-pink and was trying to convince Ray that he didn't need to be kept in bed, let alone in a hospital.

"Look, Benny, I don't have a car, we don't have any place to go, if we leave Kowalski will never find us, and I don't even know what country we're in. So shut up and go to sleep, all right?"

"Understood."

They'd missed breakfast, but an aid brought in a snack tray. Ray glared sternly until Fraser ate half, then finished the left-over crackers when Fraser fell asleep. What a day. What a night. Really, he should call somebody, but the cell phone hadn't survived the long swim, and Ray couldn't go find a pay phone, not when it would mean leaving Fraser alone.

He pulled the room's only chair forward so he could watch Fraser's face. He seemed to be...what did they call it? Resting comfortably? "I swear to God," he breathed, "I will never let you put anything in your mouth again." How was Ray going to stop him? Benny was stubborn. And dedicated as hell. And sure he could handle anything. And usually he could.

It was Ray's job to take care of things when Fraser couldn't. Ray sat back and closed his eyes. "Mr. Fraser?" he whispered. Great. Now he was doing it. "Bob?" He slitted his eyes open and glanced around the small hospital room. He'd seen pictures of Bob Fraser, but even if he hadn't it wouldn't be easy to miss a dead Mountie appearing out of nowhere. "Look, Bob. If you're here...I could use any help you've got."

Of course, there was no answer.

Ray woke when the doctor came in to check Fraser's vitals and give them the results of the blood test. The light on the floor was hot and bright: late afternoon. Ray had lost track of what day, though. One more thing he didn't know. "What country are we in?" he asked suddenly.

The doctor tore the blood pressure cuff off with a rip of Velcro and said, "Spain."

Adrenalin brought Ray wide awake, but Fraser gave the doctor a stern look and said, "We're in Canada, Ray. You can tell by the bi-lingual signs."

"Oh, right. And I used to be a detective...." Ray sighed. "How's he doing?"

"Quite well. I expect we can release him in the morning."

"Ray, why don't you get something to eat? And perhaps you'd call the Post in Sault Saint Marie and check on Diefenbaker?"

Ray stood up. "Sure. Good idea." They'd left Dief with the RCMP post along with the Riv and all their luggage. Diefenbaker would be worried by now. While he was at it, he'd call their supervisor and see if he could get some transport back. If he was lucky, maybe there was an airport somewhere. Or they could rent a car. Regardless, he wasn't getting back on a boat.

He found a coffee machine, a sandwich machine, and a pay phone in a lounge on the first floor. Stuffing himself took four minutes, making the calls another fifteen. And maybe it was a weird guide-thing, but less than half an hour away and he was nervous and jumpy to get back to Fraser. You couldn't run in a hospital, but he was moving at a fast walk when he charged to Benny's door and threw it open.

Kowalski had arrived. He was sitting on the bed, and he and Fraser were in a clinch. It looked like Attack of the Giant Squid or something. They were all over each other. About damn time. Ray backed out and pulled the door firmly shut. He'd give them five minutes, but after that he was sending Kowalski out to buy some changes of clothing, and Fraser was getting some sleep.


End file.
